Current Students and Staff

// University News

10 May 2016

Award of excellence win for CBE academics

Academics from the School of Civil and Building Engineering were granted an Award of Excellence at this year’s International Federation of Hospital Engineering (IFHE) World Congress. 

University academics Efthimia Pantzartzis and Professor Andrew Price along with Ruben Peeters, Business Development Manager at HaskoningDHV, received the award for work on their paper “Transition from health and social care buildings to users-needs oriented of care for people living with dementia”.

The paper summarises the findings of research projects conducted in two countries with different health systems and gathers evidence on how end-users’ needs can shape the design of health and social care environments. The Dutch study was funded by Royal HaskoningDHV and Eindhoven, University of Technology, whilst the UK study was funded by the Department of Health England.

During the event last month, the trio delivered a key note presentation on their research. The paper was then conferred for an Award of Excellence. This follows the previous success of the research led by Professor Andrew Price over the last two years on dementia-friendly design.

The 24th IFHE World Congress was held at the World Forum in The Hague, The Netherlands and was hosted by the NVTG, a Dutch association for technical facility managers in healthcare. The Congress was attended by 850 registered participants from 35 countries worldwide, from all continents.

Efthimia Pantzartzis said: “This Award recognises a strong change in the design of health and social care facilities, thus prompting further collaborative work in the field alongside other countries. Great attention was also received by non-European countries attending the presentation, which were looking at transferable dementia-friendly design solutions, making the team very proud of the success achieved so far.”